Shopping around for an OTA Antenna

[rlh41]

I'm shopping around for an OTA antenna to put in my attic which is about 30 feet off the ground. The digital stations I want to pick up are around 25 to 35 miles from my house. The terrain is somewhat mountainous. From what I can gather CBS, NBC, UPN, PBS, and WB are broadcasting digitally approaching maximum power but FOX is broadcasting at a much lower level. Which antenna (and preamp, if necessary) models would be suitable for my location?

[aerialist]

In most instances aerial selection is a not a hit or miss ordeal. First of all find out where the towers are located. Next find out how hogh they are, and if the digital antenna they employ is at the top of the tower or just hung lower on the side of the mast. What is the outout power of the stations to be received. Do I need a rotor? How does my analog signals look? Do I have a multipath problem? Are the hills blocking the aerial look towards the towers? I rarely ever put an antenna in the attic on any installation. Many problems occur here. Signal strength is sharply reduced and ghosting does occur in some cases. If you also check what digital channels are used this will tell you if only a UHF antenna is needed or if a VHF signal is present on digital then you may have to use a UHF/VHF antenna. If only one VHF channel is in use then you can select a cut channel or a high or low band yagi VHF to cover the Bastard channel as I call them . An examole of this is the installation I did in suburban Chicago last weekend. Every thing on digital is on UHF except CBS which is on channel 3 digital. I used a low band VHF 5 element yagi aimed it at the John Han**** tower and the UHF at the Sears tower with a F.S.M. a signal measuring device. It worked very well. Best to you antenna needs and please be SAFE and protect yourself. John L.

[rlh41]

Thanks for your response. Lucky for me that all digital channels in my area are above channel 14 and all are due north of my house. I do have a question - what does multipathing mean?

[kevinw]

Han**** tower

HEH, HEH, You said ****....Beavis and Butthead Imitation not withstanding, If at all possible keep the antanna out of the attic. You could loose 50% of your signal strength and invite a world of problems in the form multipath.

Multi path is when a signal becomes split or reflected off of tall objects like trees, buildings. What happens is the STB(tuner) has a hard time locking on the strongest signal of the many reflections. In Analog this results in ghosting, in digital this causes picture tiling or loss.

[aerialist]

Thank you Kevinw that was a good summation of multipath. Attic installs are not the greatest place for an aerial. I have seen a few work in the past on analog. Thanks again.

[pradike]

I live 29-30 miles from the bulk of the HD transmitter towers in Atlanta, and get very good HDTV reception with my CHannelMaster 3010 Stealth Antenna placed at the lower edge of my roof (no need to climb the Mount Everest peak to the rooftop!). I also have the internal amp. The nice thing is that because of the compact size and design...neighbors hardly can see it, yet its a solid product.

I get 93% or higher signal on ABC & NBC, and 77% with CBS on HDTV programming for OTA reception. I know that this is quickly becomming a popular antenna in the Atlanta market (a neighbor had to wait a week to get his - out of stock).

Avg. cost is $50-$60 street...strongly recommend the internal amp unit ($30) to get best signal strength.


Best wishes.

[kevinw]

Thank you Kevinw that was a good summation of multipath.
Every now and then I get a good one off..thanks

Pradike ..What part of Atlanta are you in and are you experiencing problems with WSB?

[pradike]

Originally posted by kevinw
Every now and then I get a good one off..thanks
Pradike ..What part of Atlanta are you in and are you experiencing problems with WSB?
I'm in Alpharetta near North Point Mall...generally no real issues with WSB reception - the only issues recently are when they forgot to turn on the national audio for the first 16 minutes of MNF this week, and occasionally, they seem to putz with their sync of audio/video. I have also heard that they are currently working on their transmitter(s), doing some maintenance and upgrade work...so that may lead to periodic "issues" during this month.

It is a shame that ABC is taking the K-Mart approach to HDTV, in that they only broadcast 720i...but its still much better than regular network TV....especially since I view it on a 100" diag screen using a DLP projector.

Since I relocated my ChannelMaster Stealth antenna up to the lower part of my roof (rather than 6 ft. above ground level where my D*TV HDdish is , reception on all Atlanta HD channels is 77%-93%, even though I'm right at the limit (30 miles or so ) from most of the HD towers.